Things I didn't know: 1. Salary cap space can roll over from year to year!2. In 2014, the NFL will get an additional $1.2 billion in TV revenue, yet the salary cap will not increase

Patriots owner Robert Kraft and then-Colts center Jeff Saturday created the defining moment of the 2011 offseason when they embraced in a bear hug at a news conference announcing the end of the NFL lockout and the agreement of a 10-year collective bargaining agreement.

Almost exactly two years have passed, and now that the realities of the CBA have set in, Saturday might want to take that hug back.

No matter how you slice it, the owners obliterated the NFL Players Association and new executive director DeMaurice Smith in the 2011 negotiations.

The biggest proof came last week when the publicly controlled Green Bay Packers released their annual financial statements. The Packers reported a team-record operating profit of $54.3 million for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2013, a 26 percent increase from the year before, according to the Sports Business Journal.Related

Graphic: When training camps open

Even more eye-popping, the Packers’ net income in the two years before the CBA: $22.3 million. In the two seasons since: $85.8 million.

If the Packers are making money hand over fist, so are the 31 other teams.

The players? The rookie pool has been slashed, young players are locked into unfavorable contracts, and the money isn’t trickling to the veterans, who are getting priced out of the NFL, even at minimum salaries. The NFLPA declined to respond to a request for comment.

“The NFLPA absolutely failed the NFL players,” said one prominent agent with two decades in the league, who spoke under the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by the NFLPA. “It’s the worst CBA in professional sports history. It’s pushing the veterans out of the game and cuts the rookie pay in half. How is that a good deal?”

To be fair, the players have better post-retirement benefits — medical care, pensions, transition programs, and more — under the new CBA. The creation of the $620 million Legacy Fund for pre-1993 players helped correct some mistakes of the past. Players also have a better quality of life, with a shorter offseason program, stricter guidelines on contact in practice, and the elimination of two-a-days in training camp.

Then again, the owners probably were happy to cave on those demands. It helps them promote player safety and ward off lawsuits. And do you think Kraft or any owner cares if his players have two-a-days?

But when it comes to the serious stuff — splitting up the NFL’s $9 billion in revenue — the NFLPA “got taken to the woodshed,” said another agent with 18 years of experience.

“Yeah, players got better post-retirement stuff, but I’d rather have an extra million in my bank account today than a few extra grand in my pension in 40 years,” he said. “The owners used the bad economy to cry poor, and then they took everything.”

How badly did the owners beat down the NFLPA? Let us count the ways:

1. The rookies got a raw deal.

The owners said the system needed to be fixed when a bust such as JaMarcus Russell could make $37 million guaranteed and Sam Bradford, the last No. 1 overall pick under the old CBA, could get $50 million guaranteed before playing a snap.

Rookie contracts got slashed in the new CBA, with Cam Newton, the No. 1 overall pick in 2011, getting just $22 million guaranteed. What’s more, rookie signing bonuses have remained flat for the last three seasons. Kansas City’s Eric Fisher, the 2013 No. 1 overall pick, will get the same $14.518 million signing bonus that Newton and Andrew Luck (2012) did.

And only the top picks are receiving top dollar. Jacksonville cornerback Johnathan Cyprien, the first pick of the second round, will have a modest salary cap number of $994,382 this year. Players taken in rounds 3-7 are all in the $400,000-$500,000 range, with the league minimum at $405,000.

But perhaps the worst deal for the rookies: All drafted players are locked into their contracts for at least three years. The CBA prevents any drafted player from renegotiating his contract until after his third season. Most rookies do get increases in base salary over each of their four seasons, however, and they’re also subject to player performance bonuses if they reach playing time markers.

Russell Wilson, who had a phenomenal rookie season after being drafted in the third round by the Seahawks, has no choice but to play the 2013 season at his base salary of $526,217. Even if they wanted to, the Seahawks can’t extend his contract until after the 2014 season.

This rule is brutal on running backs, who are by far the biggest injury risk and often don’t even make it to Year 4. Even if they do, a team has much more incentive to draft another pair of young, cheap legs instead of committing major dollars to a veteran back. A running back is almost better off sitting on the bench for two years instead of wasting his hits at minimum salary.

2. Veterans get squeezed.

The money saved on the rookies was supposed to trickle down to the veterans, but instead it appears it’s simply going straight into the owners’ pockets.

While quarterback pay continues to skyrocket, and a couple of veterans were able to cash in during free agency — Miami’s Mike Wallace, Kansas City’s Dwayne Bowe, Cleveland’s Paul Kruger — the incredible value of rookie contracts is now squeezing out many veterans.

Why would a team pay big money to a free agent when it can simply draft a cheaper, healthier alternative and have him locked in to a near-minimum salary for at least three seasons?

Some free agents, such as Miami’s Dustin Keller, Seattle’s Michael Bennett, Denver’s Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, and New England’s Aqib Talib, took modest one-year deals after receiving low-ball offers on multiyear deals. Cliff Avril, who played for $10.6 million last year as the Lions’ franchise player and is just 27, was only able to score a two-year deal with $6 million guaranteed from the Seahawks.

And while the CBA promises minimum salaries for veterans — $715,000 this year for players with 4-6 years of experience, $840,000 for 7-9, and $940,000 for 10-plus — many times it works against them.

“I’ve had teams tell me all the time, ‘Your guy is a minimum-salary guy, he’s too expensive,’ ” the first agent said. “I have veteran players that would play for $50,000 if they could.”

3. Owners hold all the cards.

The salary cap in 2009 was $123 million, decreased to $120 million for 2011, and will remain relatively flat for the foreseeable future. The cap rose to $123 million this year, but only after the NFLPA allowed the owners to defer payments on performance-based pay for 2013, which totaled $110.7 million in 2012 and was split among dozens of players.

Player-performance money that is earned in 2013 and should be paid out in March 2014 will instead be held in an account and paid out in March 2016, with the owners keeping two years’ worth of interest.

The salary cap isn’t even supposed to increase in 2014 when the NFL will receive an influx of new television money — $3.1 billion annually from broadcast revenue, up from $1.9 billion.

The CBA only requires teams to spend in cash 89 percent of the salary cap number, and teams can roll over any unused cap space from year to year. Often, teams would rather keep the cap money for rollover purposes than use it on a veteran who may or may not pan out.

And worst of all, players are stuck with this deal through the 2021 draft.

Many agents, naturally, are incensed about the deal and are pining for the days of Gene Upshaw.

“There was never any transparency from the union to the players,” another agent said. “It was basically, ‘We’ve agreed to terms on the deal, we expect everyone to ratify it, and let’s pop champagne bottles.’

“De Smith was a slick trial lawyer who came in and sold the players on a fancy PowerPoint presentation. Ninety-eight percent of the players have no understanding how bad this deal is.”

*Fun GUs note* the issue at hand has been debated ( looking at you, Scout ) and I think the outcome ( at least since the new millenium) has been predictable. The sad fact is, the salary cap was supposed to 'level the playing field', when in reality, all it has done is enrich the owners at the expense of the 'average' player. Look no further for 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions'.

I'm not sure you can place blame on an inanimate object like the salary cap.

The Salary cap wasn't hurting the players to this extent prior to the new deal. So it really is poor negotiation from the players, who thought there would be a windfall of cash in 2014, and thus their entire negotiation was built on carving that up as opposed to looking at everything involved in the deal.

Not to mention, the fact that the players didn't push to remove Roger Goodell from the disciplinary process.

All in all, the players signed a bad deal a this article points. The existence of a salary cap really has little to do with that.

I'm not sure you can place blame on an inanimate object like the salary cap.

The Salary cap wasn't hurting the players to this extent prior to the new deal. So it really is poor negotiation from the players, who thought there would be a windfall of cash in 2014, and thus their entire negotiation was built on carving that up as opposed to looking at everything involved in the deal.

Not to mention, the fact that the players didn't push to remove Roger Goodell from the disciplinary process.

All in all, the players signed a bad deal a this article points. The existence of a salary cap really has little to do with that.

wrong.

first, the strawman argument "The Salary cap wasn't hurting the players to this extent prior to the new deal." Had the salary cap not been enforced, you would not need this strawman. And 'cap' ( much like 'tax') may be inanimate objects, but they are not passive. They are meant as an 'inducement', and have authority behind it.

The facts are, this is f*cking the players. First, there is now a 'minimum' salary where one did not previously exist, whose function is to send older players and J.A.G's right out the door. Call it the NFL's 'cash for clunkers'. Now you might ask' But why would owners want a minimum salary rule? Because they can 'CAP' the top salaries, which saves them $$$$. And this is exactly what has happened since the inception of the cap in the NFL: it was owners in collusion convincing the unwashed masses that regulating this was a good thing.

And they laugh all the way to the bank!

On the other hand, in MLB for the past 15 seasons, only three teams – the Royals, the Expos/Nationals, and the Pirates – have failed to reach the playoffs at least once. Only the Orioles, Indians, A’s, Cubs, and Dodgers join them as failing to win at least one pennant, with the Indians (1995) and the Orioles (1993) not being too far away. MLB is more competitive than it’s ever been, and I’d argue that more MLB teams go into the season with a shot at the World Series than NBA OR NFL teams have at their championship.

Competition works at every level. Every time. 'capping' salaries and the like, that isn't 'competition'. Dont like the Yankees winning all the time? Buy the Marlins and kick them in the nuts. Hate the Lakers and Heat? Ask Marc Cuban. It is considerably harder to fight the current in capped leagues. Competition wins everytime.

But keep thinking the cap is for the 99%. This is not a bad deal by the NFLPA, it is them getting bent over again by the owners who have now gotten all the extra TV $$ AND don't have to share. Because, you know. They have to honor the 'cap'

As for the competitive level of baseball, how do you factor in the fact that in the past decade baseball has modified its revenue sharing program, to basically have big market teams finance small market teams, as well as the "revolution" of Moneyball/sabermetrics?

Your argument of "Baseball is doing well...baseball doesn't have a salary cap, therefore salary cap is bad" is overly simplistic and certainly doesn't at all try to examine all of the factors why baseball is doing well.

Look the simple truth is that the players negotiated a good deal in 2006, so good that the owners opted out of it in 2008 because they didn't like it, and then that subsequently led to the deal that would be signed in 2011.

If I was using your simplistic logic, the NFL had a salary cap from 1993-2006, and experienced unprecedented growth/success (meanwhile baseball was tanking during those years sans a salary cap), therefore salary cap is good.

The problem isn't the existence of a salary cap, it's the leadership of the NFLPA as the article indicates.

"in MLB for the past 15 seasons, only three teams – the Royals, the Expos/Nationals, and the Pirates – have failed to reach the playoffs at least once."

read that twice more.

"As for the competitive level of baseball, how do you factor in the fact that in the past decade baseball has modified its revenue sharing program"

we have discussed this at length. and it's not just the last decade.. while it's true that some franchises pay luxury taxes, the facts are the Yankees are still FREE to spend as much $$ as they wish. Which does not equate with end results.. And, in the last uncapped ( free ) sport, the results are quite different from the other three ( and hockey....Ill put that up there next to soccer) capped sports. Period.

And, Sabermetrics ( which was proven to helping the Sox finally start winning championships again) was a direct result of having an uncapped league. It was 'competition' in it's finest hour. Without a hard cap, there is no impetus to even scheme it up.

I think it's hilarious. Here are the owners, 'capping' thier spending to 'help', and yet since the millenium, it hasn't. The same teams go to the playoffs, it seems. Just like in the NBA..And you can 'blame' the NFLPA for making a bad deal, my point is they should have never had to make that deal.

Competition always makes everything better!

Look at the Ravens. Because of the 'cap' thier QB is getting 'paid' , and the rest of the team has to eat it. This is not a 'good thing'. This will not work out well for them. If this were the MLB, Steve Bisciotti could keep slinging $$ to beat the band..Flacco will carry a cap charge of $28.55 million in 2016, an unreasonable figure barring a gigantic leap in salary cap limits for a team. The Ravens can’t move on from him at that point either- his dead money charge is nearly $26 million. Even if he were to fail to live up to the lofty expectations of his contract the Ravens are already locked into $10.55 million in prorated charges in both 2016 and 2017. With $15.3 million in dead money in 2017 it more or less locks the Ravens into a second extension with Flacco that will see a price based on cap leverage as much as skill. Because of this stupid cap, the Ravens are going to have a hard time of it in the future...And the owners and the league has successfully brainwashed most of the fans into thinking 'what a wonderful idea! this is truly fair! oh, thank you owners for being so fair minded! huzzah!' You guys keep believing that the salary cap is 'good', favors the 'players' and results in a better product on the field. Ill keep believeing the owners have hoodwinked y'all, and that the Oakland Radiers have less of a chance at the Superbowl in the next 3 years as the Pirates have at the WS.

"in MLB for the past 15 seasons, only three teams – the Royals, the Expos/Nationals, and the Pirates – have failed to reach the playoffs at least once."

read that twice more.

And in the NFL in the past 15 seasons, ZERO teams have failed to reach the playoffs at least once.

fun gus wrote:

we have discussed this at length. and it's not just the last decade.. while it's true that some franchises pay luxury taxes, the facts are the Yankees are still FREE to spend as much $$ as they wish. Which does not equate with end results.. And, in the last uncapped ( free ) sport, the results are quite different from the other three ( and hockey....Ill put that up there next to soccer) capped sports. Period.

What's "free" about the fact that the Yankees have to give up their local revenue to subsidize teams like the Pirates, Royals, etc. And am I mistaken or is it that in a few years, the Yankees won't be eligible to receive a portion of the revenue sharing starting in 2016?

fun gus wrote:

.Flacco will carry a cap charge of $28.55 million in 2016, an unreasonable figure barring a gigantic leap in salary cap limits for a team. The Ravens can’t move on from him at that point either- his dead money charge is nearly $26 million. Even if he were to fail to live up to the lofty expectations of his contract the Ravens are already locked into $10.55 million in prorated charges in both 2016 and 2017. With $15.3 million in dead money in 2017 it more or less locks the Ravens into a second extension with Flacco that will see a price based on cap leverage as much as skill. Because of this stupid cap, the Ravens are going to have a hard time of it in the future

You're sadly mistaken. The cap didn't lock the Ravens into Flacco, the Ravens did. When the Ravens decided to give Flacco a $120 million contract, they weren't committing to him for 3 years. They were paying him because they deemed him a franchise QB, and were committing to him for another 5-10 years. Because as you said, they will be forced to renegotiate in 2016, and because of the size of his contract they won't be able to cut him for a long time.

The salary cap won't kill the Ravens, it's their decision to give Flacco a huge contract. And if he's not worthy of that contract, then their decision to pay him was the mistake, not the limits the cap puts on him. The salary cap exists. The salary cap didn't force the Ravens to make a 5+ year commitment to Flacco.

fun gus wrote:

You guys keep believing that the salary cap is 'good', favors the 'players' and results in a better product on the field. Ill keep believeing the owners have hoodwinked y'all, and that the Oakland Radiers have less of a chance at the Superbowl in the next 3 years as the Pirates have at the WS.

Of course the cap is good. Because of the cap, the Falcons are in their current position of being a competitive team. Without it, the Falcons would be the Pirates of the NFL because they are a low revenue team. And without it, Arthur Blank would have forced a new stadium on the citizens of Atlanta a decade ago to try and change that rather than wait 15 years.

And there is no Moneyball/Sabermetrics in football to "evolve" to get around the cap. Because without a cap, low revenue teams like the Falcons wouldn't have been in a position to keep players like Matt Ryan or good draft picks on their 2nd contracts because like the Pirates they would have to try and deal them away before they price themselves out of their range.

So the cap is good for football. Without it, the Falcons would be the same team they were throughout the first 28 years of their existence: bad.

"in MLB for the past 15 seasons, only three teams – the Royals, the Expos/Nationals, and the Pirates – have failed to reach the playoffs at least once."

read that twice more.

And in the NFL in the past 15 seasons, ZERO teams have failed to reach the playoffs at least once.

fun gus wrote:

we have discussed this at length. and it's not just the last decade.. while it's true that some franchises pay luxury taxes, the facts are the Yankees are still FREE to spend as much $$ as they wish. Which does not equate with end results.. And, in the last uncapped ( free ) sport, the results are quite different from the other three ( and hockey....Ill put that up there next to soccer) capped sports. Period.

What's "free" about the fact that the Yankees have to give up their local revenue to subsidize teams like the Pirates, Royals, etc. And am I mistaken or is it that in a few years, the Yankees won't be eligible to receive a portion of the revenue sharing starting in 2016?

fun gus wrote:

.Flacco will carry a cap charge of $28.55 million in 2016, an unreasonable figure barring a gigantic leap in salary cap limits for a team. The Ravens can’t move on from him at that point either- his dead money charge is nearly $26 million. Even if he were to fail to live up to the lofty expectations of his contract the Ravens are already locked into $10.55 million in prorated charges in both 2016 and 2017. With $15.3 million in dead money in 2017 it more or less locks the Ravens into a second extension with Flacco that will see a price based on cap leverage as much as skill. Because of this stupid cap, the Ravens are going to have a hard time of it in the future

You're sadly mistaken. The cap didn't lock the Ravens into Flacco, the Ravens did. When the Ravens decided to give Flacco a $120 million contract, they weren't committing to him for 3 years. They were paying him because they deemed him a franchise QB, and were committing to him for another 5-10 years. Because as you said, they will be forced to renegotiate in 2016, and because of the size of his contract they won't be able to cut him for a long time.

The salary cap won't kill the Ravens, it's their decision to give Flacco a huge contract. And if he's not worthy of that contract, then their decision to pay him was the mistake, not the limits the cap puts on him. The salary cap exists. The salary cap didn't force the Ravens to make a 5+ year commitment to Flacco.

fun gus wrote:

You guys keep believing that the salary cap is 'good', favors the 'players' and results in a better product on the field. Ill keep believeing the owners have hoodwinked y'all, and that the Oakland Radiers have less of a chance at the Superbowl in the next 3 years as the Pirates have at the WS.

Of course the cap is good. Because of the cap, the Falcons are in their current position of being a competitive team. Without it, the Falcons would be the Pirates of the NFL because they are a low revenue team. And without it, Arthur Blank would have forced a new stadium on the citizens of Atlanta a decade ago to try and change that rather than wait 15 years.

And there is no Moneyball/Sabermetrics in football to "evolve" to get around the cap. Because without a cap, low revenue teams like the Falcons wouldn't have been in a position to keep players like Matt Ryan or good draft picks on their 2nd contracts because like the Pirates they would have to try and deal them away before they price themselves out of their range.

So the cap is good for football. Without it, the Falcons would be the same team they were throughout the first 28 years of their existence: bad.

okay, I will play along

"And in the NFL in the past 15 seasons, ZERO teams have failed to reach the playoffs at least once." yes, and the two teams ( Browns and Raiders ) are outliers. Why you ask? Well, because of two things: the modification of the playoff rules ( done in 2002) and the numbers. 30 MLB teams play 162 games a year. 32 NFL franchises play 16 games a year. My point still stands: it is more reasonable for a Royals fan to dream about going to the World Series then a Browns or Raiders fan to the Superbowl, because the freedom exists where a billionaire could buy up the team, stock it and win a championship.

(We saw this when the CEO of Blockbuster bought the Marlins, won a title, then sold off the heavy hitters a year later.)

"What's "free" about the fact that the Yankees have to give up their local revenue to subsidize teams like the Pirates, Royals, etc."

What do you not understand? The Yankees are 'free'. They can either A:spend as much as they want, and pay a small fine, or they cannot and not have to pay the luxury tax. See? They have a choice. Guess who does not have a choice? Arthur Blank. Swing, and a miss!

"Because of the cap, the Falcons are in their current position of being a competitive team. Without it, the Falcons would be the Pirates of the NFL because they are a low revenue team. And without it, Arthur Blank would have forced a new stadium on the citizens of Atlanta a decade ago to try and change that rather than wait 15 years."

Bullsquat. You are making two logical flaws here: first you are making an assumption that Blank would not have poured his $$ into winning a Championship (Harry Wayne Huizenga?). I disagree. I believe were there no salary cap, Blank is the exact same kinda guy, who would have bought himself a Lombardie trophy, and probably sold out by now. The second flaw is that because a team is 'low revenue' that noone would bother doing what Huizenga did. You know who else is a 'low revenue team'? The Marlins. The same Marlins that have one more Championship then the Falcons.

Blank would IMO, be just like Marc Cuban. A uberrich egomanaic who would love getting rid of the cap so he could buy a championship...

I love that people look at the salary cap, think it 'helps', and is fair and equitable. Hilarious. Just look at who is the real winner with a cap in place: (hint, it is not the players, or the fans )

If your a Raider or Browns fan, the salary cap is not the reason they stink. We all know why they suck. But, without a cap, the slight possibility exists that a Micheal Jordan, or a Trump, etc can come along and pull off the unimaginable.

The fatal flaw in your argument is that you continue to compare baseball and football. They are different sports. The reason I got out of that salary cap thread about baseball 6 years ago (I don't know if it was that long ago, but it seems like it) was because BirdBrain made me realize that I wasn't a fan of baseball but was a fan of football, and thus trying to make baseball more like football under this false belief that it would then be better. It wouldn't. You're making that same exact mistake, except in the opposite direction.

So I'm going to leave baseball out of it except this one point. Football isn't like baseball. Moneyball/sabermetrics are the way of "bucking the system" to equalize things. Can you do that in football? Who knows. But considering that free agency, draft, the length of a player's career, and the lack of a minor league dramatic change player development and personnel decision making in the NFL as opposed to MLB. The fact that baseball is ostensibly an individual sport masquerading as a team sport, while football is truly a team sport makes the dynamics of building a roster spectacularly different. It's an apples and oranges debate. It might even be closer to apples and cabbages.

I also find it highly ironic that you are indirectly championing advanced stats and how it has made baseball better, yet are a vehement detractor of advanced stats when they are applied to football.

Secondly, your argument is highly flawed, because you can only make this argument that the salary cap is hurting the NFL now. You couldn't make that argument 5 years ago, nor could you make it in the previous 14 years of the salary cap's existence prior to that point. Again, what you're seeing as a fatal flaw to the cap isn't really. It's a fatal flaw to the current Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFL and the NFLPA.

And since no one wants to go through and read 100+ pages of that document, here's the cliff notes from their own abstract:

Quote:

Abstract: Following the advent of free agency in the National Football League (NFL), the 1993 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between NFL owners and the players' union instituted a salary cap to maintain competitive balance on the field and financial strength and stability off the field. Previous research has shown that the CBA was successful in maintaining intra-season competitive balance. I confirm these find [sic] finding, but also find that inter-season parity-the degree to which unsuccessful teams from one season are successful the next-significantly increased following the 1993 CBA. I also find that NFL revenue growth has been greater than rival professional sport leagues, suggesting that the salary cap, by increasing competitive balance, has actually increased player salaries.

It's a collective bargaining issue, not a salary cap issue. Thus my earlier comment about the salary cap being an inanimate object. The players are suffering hardship because the NFLPA did a poor job negotiating this round of collective bargaining, after winning in 2006. And this time they screwed the pooch even more because there is no opt out clause, which basically means they are locked into a bad deal (from their perspective, clearly not from the owners perspective) until 2021. It has nothing to do with the existence (or lack thereof) of a salary cap. The salary cap certainly wasn't hurting the players between 1994-2008. In fact every shred of data you can find suggests that the league grew EXPONENTIALLY during that time despite having the "horror" of a salary cap.

Meanwhile during that time, without a salary cap baseball was crashing and burning. And it's only really in the past decade since people have invented a system that circumvents the lack of a salary cap before baseball was able to create parity and begin to grow again.

If I was following your logic, then I would clearly conclude that salary cap = good. But I don't follow that sort of crude logic (hardly can be called that). The lack of a salary cap is working for baseball. So why change it? That's a conclusion I came to 6 years ago. And the existence of a salary cap is working for football, so why change it? And if it's not working any longer, it doesn't have anything to do with the nature of a salary cap, it has everything to do with collective bargaining agreed to 2 summers ago, because it was certainly working for the previous 15+ years.

The fatal flaw in your argument is that you continue to compare baseball and football. They are different sports.. The lack of a salary cap is working for baseball. So why change it? That's a conclusion I came to 6 years ago. And the existence of a salary cap is working for football, so why change it? And if it's not working any longer, it doesn't have anything to do with the nature of a salary cap, it has everything to do with collective bargaining agreed to 2 summers ago, because it was certainly working for the previous 15+ years.

well, I respectfully disagree. You say you dont caompare baseball/football, yet later in the thread you kind of do that by saying the absense/presence of a cap has certain effects on thier respective sports.

I wont drag this out, as we have been debating this for about 6 years now, but I have a question for you...Pudge, do you think you could accurately predict the playoff participants in the NFL,NBA and MLB for the next two or three seasons? I think it would be relatively easy to do this with an above .500 average with the NFL, and the NBA is even easier. Yet, it would be most difficult in the MLB ( and not just because you are not a 'fan').I mean, before the season began, most people would have said the Yankees were a lock for the postseason, yet they are in fourth place in thier division today, and if the playoffs started now, they would be out..Yet, I can pretty much rest assured the Raiders and Browns aren't going to be hoisting a Lombardy, or even playing in the playoffs. That does not to me seem like 'parity'.

We know in football, that quarterback play is heavily linked to team success. If I was predicting who would make the playoffs over the next 3 years, I should have some relatively decent shot by simply choosing the teams that have the best QBs.

The last time I paid any attention to baseball, success was largely determined by good hitting and good pitching. I assume that still remains the case, but even when I paid attention to baseball, I don't think predicting those things were quite as easy to forecast.

So to answer your question, I probably would have a harder time picking baseball playoff teams. But again, I don't think any of that has to do with the salary cap. I think that's a red herring in this argument.

The salary cap doesn't stop the Browns or Raiders from getting good QBs. If/when both teams use high picks on QBs next year, if that player winds up being good, then both of those teams respective issues are largely solved.

The rule of thumb in the NFL is that if you get good QB play and you draft well, you'll reap the benefits on the football field. In the case of the Browns and Raiders, they have over the past decade not done that. The Browns have been drafting better in recent years, and if they can get good QB play then they are probably going ot be in the playoffs sooner than probably many think.

In the case of teams like the Falcons and Ravens now handing out huge contracts to Ryan and Flacco, respectively, the rules haven't changed. But the size of those contracts put more emphasis on good drafting than it did before, because neither team (thanks to the salary cap) will be as free to supplement their roster with higher-priced free agents as they could before they had a $100 million player on their team. But I think in the case of both teams, that's a trade-off both are willing to make because of the precious limitation of good QBs in the league. Demand is high, supply is little. And in the case of both Ryan and Flacco, assuming both players play at their current levels both Atlanta and Baltimore should remain competitive for another 5-10 years.

As I understand it, the NFL salary cap comes basically from the shared revenue in the league's highly lucrative TV contracts. If you dump the salary cap, then you dump that, and presumably in a truly "free system" revenue sharing goes out the window, and teams are basically asked to negotiate their own tv deals to carry the majority of their games (basically when they aren't playing a national team like GB, CHI, PIT, DAL, NYG, etc.) and it would reach a point where unless you lived within 100 miles of Atlanta, you would find it very difficult to view Falcon games. And as someone that doesn't live within 100 miles of Atlanta, I am selfishly glad that is the case.

And also because of the major hit in revenue a team like the Falcons would take, if they were in a situation where they had to extend Matt Ryan like they were this year, because of their low revenue, they couldn't afford to pay him a market level deal. And if they did, it would put them in the red and like the Texas Rangers with Alex Rodriguez, eventually they would have to let him go via trade to some higher revenue team (in this hypothetitical, let's say the Jets or Texans). And basically hope they get back via trade enough compensation and stumble upon another good QB and hope that within the first 4-5 years of that QB's career before he is also due a huge salary that the team can't afford, that they win a title. And teams like the Falcons would be like the Marlins of yesteryear which basically every 5 years or so hope they have built up a winner and then have to gut the team/salary and start over.

Again, baseball is a different sport. You can use sabermetrics because you're collecting individuals to build a team. In football, it's a team, but it's built around an individual. There is no undervalued QB that you can get and build a winner with. That equivalent in football is a Jason Campbell, Chad Henne, Matt Cassel, Ryan Fitzpatrick-type of QB. You can build a competitive team with those types of QBs, but you're never going to build a championship caliber team.

I for one do not believe that sort of system would be inherently superior for football because it's "free" and lacks a cap.

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